


Code of Hammurabi

by kuwdora



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: AU, Angst, Episode: s03e04 I Am Become Death, Established Relationship, M/M, Shapeshifting, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuwdora/pseuds/kuwdora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>”If the future really is written in stone, then I think we’re going to need a bigger chisel.” </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code of Hammurabi

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through season 3.  
> Set in an AU version of 3.04 “I Am Become Death.”  
> Written for [](http://thespottedzebra.livejournal.com/profile)[**thespottedzebra**](http://thespottedzebra.livejournal.com/) for [](http://heroes-exchange.livejournal.com/profile)[**heroes_exchange**](http://heroes-exchange.livejournal.com/). Many thanks goes to **teaphile** for her beta sword and her patience for listening to me while I freaked out _24/7_ when I was writing and rewriting this story.

  


  


The sensation of the bed dipping behind him eased Sylar into a fitful state of wakefulness. He shuffled, drawing the blanket to his chest and made the slow effort to roll over, arm slinking back into the cavernous warmth. He nosed at his pillow and simply laid there with his eyes closed, listening to Peter settle beside him and managed only a half-hearted greeting.

“How did it go?”

He didn’t remember where Peter had been but he was surprised to find him back already. It was rare that Peter was around when Sylar had gone to bed. Traveling through multiple timelines messed with the circadian system and Sylar was used to Peter operating on a 36-hour cycle, trying to catch up on his sleep in the afternoons and evenings.

“There’ve been some problems but it’s nothing that I can undo right now.”

“Don’t tell me you walked into another building and blew yourself up. S’become unoriginal,” Sylar murmured, smoothing out the pillow between them as Peter finished cocooning himself.

“I don’t remember any complaints when I found you,” Peter said and Sylar could hear the smile in his voice.

“Finding me was an accident,” Sylar corrected and stretched. Peter had walked right into Pinehearst’s California branch where Sylar had been residing in the basement, drugged and prodded for the better part of six months as they studied and tried to map out his DNA. Peter had taken the building down, killing over 200 employees including his father and Claire. Sylar had died along the rest of them, but when he regenerated, Peter was the one he saw fleeing the scene in the nude, skin and clothes as burnt off as Sylar’s. Fortunately for Sylar Peter had a contingency plan.

“You followed me and took my back-up clothes,” Peter said, feigning anger.

“You’re lucky that’s all I took,” he muttered.

“I could have stopped you if I wanted,” Peter said.

Sylar shifted, drawing the blanket tight around him. That was something he’d never agree with out loud.

“You didn’t,” Sylar said.

“Be glad I didn’t.”

Sylar opened his eyes and tried to focus on the silhouette in front of him.

“Been thinking about the possibility of talking to Nathan when he's in Montevideo this summer. Would be a good place to corner him, different security measures and all," he said and Sylar twined his fingers into Peter's hand, squeezing, which should have been disapproval enough. "Or maybe I’ll try something different tomorrow,” Peter said, the amused lilt in his voice dissipating; the wear and tear of jumping through timelines taking its toll was evident, almost rousing Sylar enough to do something about it.

“Fresh eyes w’be good,” Sylar said, exhaling into Peter’s touch, fingers grazing the memento Nakamura had left him years ago. His eyes fluttered shut. Peter had to make sure that whatever actions he took in the past, the bed he returned to was the right one. Peter increased the pressure on his abdomen and Sylar murmured a vague assent. He withdrew his hand from under the shirt and laid it at the base of Sylar’s throat, thumbing the collar bone, the scarless spot where Claire had stuck a 4 inch knife there and twisted while her new partner had Tasered him from behind. Sylar could heal as much as anyone with Claire’s rejuvenative capabilities, but the combination of the metallic blade wedged in his body helping conduct 50,000 volts made it an unearthly experience. He’d felt his heart stop before he hit the ground. When Sylar came to, he vomited blood for 15 minutes after the blade was removed as his body tried to recover from the overload. His limbs were still spasming as Peter hauled him away from the destruction of the New Jersey Port, a successful attempt to further disrupt Pinehearst’s activities but at a shitty cost.

Sylar slid his hand along Peter’s arm, over his neck. Peter’s chin was smooth, too shaven, but Sylar felt the familiar territory once he felt the edge of Peter’s scar beginning high on his cheeks. Peter might masquerade as his younger, perpetual 26-year old self in previous timelines, but when he returned to the present the skin split across his features and caved in, an emblem of pride and despair permanently engraved on his face.

Peter leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “Go back to sleep,” he whispered into Sylar’s cheek, stroking his hair, massaging away whatever concerns he had a moment ago.

 

***

 

Blurry figures roamed the sky beyond the frost-encrusted glass and Sylar scratched the window for a better view of the intrepid commuters braving the New York winter. But ultimately he had to turn away from the spectacle. It was difficult to to look at the blatant show of power, now so common place. Abilities that were no longer gifts, no longer special.

He ducked beneath yarn strewn from the wall to kitchen, photos and news articles dangling, a myriad of criss-crossing lives and timelines that Peter has been running down. He was still trying to save the world, pluck the right chord to change everything. He could have knit everyone in the country a sweater by now with the amount of yarn he’d used.

Sylar stopped in the middle of the organized mess, right where Peter would stand for hours, wallowing and postulating. He was careful to step over the messy stacks of paper that sat on the floor when he approached the wall that was lined with articles, dates, and hand-written notes on the key players. Since this was something he was used to seeing every day, this morning Sylar noticed a few of the articles had shifted over several columns. He tried to trace the shift back to the origin, fingers roaming above and below columns of text until he ducked beneath a few more strands, discovering the obituary section of the wall had increased. Peter had been collecting and memorizing the names of all the people who had died by his actions, whether they were in the present or the past. He kept their names and the available family photo displayed on the wall because Peter wouldn’t be himself without self-flagellation.

He grabbed his messenger bag and began packing it with half-dozen doctored phones. Sylar closed his toolkit and returned the box to the bottom drawer of his desk. He’d spent the last week tinkering, modifying the GPS and data cache on the phones so that it’d be easier to get relevant information without having to go through the telecoms to mine for information because now he was to embark upon his reconnaissance mission: Senator Mace Larkin.

Sylar spent several days following Senator Mace Larkin in his home state of Pennyslvania. A longtime friend of the Petrelli family, Peter had even shown him photos of Nathan and Larkin together when they’d returned from the service. These days Pinehearst had been padding the Senator’s pocket in return for removing the regulatory hurdles for approving more abilities.

He followed the man to and from work but it was most of all it was nausea-inducing and annoying to play the eager intern of the office: Theo Van Winters. However, the role made it easy to move around even if he had to fetch the coffee and run miscellaneous errands between in the meantime. He swapped out Larkin’s personal and work cells with identical replacements without a problem. Sylar was about to slip away when Theo was roped in to take notes in afternoon office-wide staff meeting.

It was immediately apparent that Larkin thrived in a room full of people, preferably large enough to contain his ego, such a room existed. They laughed, they joked in return, but it was the _way_ the staff had laughed so readily that’d made Sylar do a double-take. He’d shifted in his seat and took a sip of the coffee, eyes lingering on Larkin’s form, the familiar tickle in the back of his mind whenever Larkin made a point, trying to cajole the staffers into agreement. He was too convincing.

The literal power of persuasion. A politician’s best weapon and something that Pinehearst hadn’t released for public consumption, as far as Sylar had known.

Sylar could sense that it was there and what Larkin was doing—but it felt _off_ —like a botched recipe. The ability wasn’t perfect. Now that Sylar knew what that feeling was, the artificiality of the whole conversation was apparent.

It was a new age of nepotism. Sylar seethed with so much resentment that he managed to slip away from the office, he almost forgot to dump the real Theo off at the hospital before he left the state.

 

***

 

Sylar dropped his bag on the countertop and stared at the apartment. Even after spending a week in a roadside motel, commuting to the Senator’s office, he was too frustrated to appreciate being home again. The hours he spent brooding in the car about Larkin’s power didn’t help. He could have easily killed the man but he didn’t want to create any unnecessary problems for himself, he had to learn the hard way why it was important to keep a low profile, even against his judgement.

He went to the computer desk in the living room, turning on the printer and desktop machine. He scrolled through the latest alerts that Peter might or might not find useful and began printing them for later.

Sylar pushed the swivel chair away, got up, and avoided glancing at a photos of a destroyed bridge in Odessa, of Chandra and Mohinder in his graduation robes, of a cheerleader back when she still felt human dangling on the yarn. He brushed them all away, knocking several askew on the timeline.

He glanced at the wall in front of him, the one where the bookcase stood. To the left, Peter’s easel sat empty while several canvases were propped up behind it. Sylar glanced at the bottom shelf of art supplies and to the easel again. He twisted his wrist and pulled the canvases out. There was a blonde Claire with Angela in the Hamptons, a disembodied hand with a nail through it, a bird’s eye view of the Hudson with black dots flying across, an unfamiliar child sitting in a green-shaded corner. None of the canvases were blank. Sylar put them back, muting his disappointment. He nudged the easel out of the way but it toppled over. He bent and picked it up, opening the legs and putting it back where it stood. He looked from the paintings to thew all they were leaning against, to the black bookshelf and the wall behind it which was… almost appealing.

He glanced around him and took step back, looking at the wall. Blank space that Peter had not claimed for the histories and theories of multiple lives. Sylar moved the bookshelf a few inches from the wall and looked it up and down. It could use some color and something decidedly not of Peter’s design. Resolute, he physically grabbed the easel and canvases and moved them out of the way as the bookshelf creeped across the floor of it’s own accord. He used his TK to keep the stuff on the shelves from toppling out and since there was no vacancy left in the living area, he marched the shelves into the bedroom and set the easel and canvases beside it. Sylar kneeled and pulled out the bag of art supplies from the bottom shelf and returned to the wall.

Sylar ran his hand along the surface, as if his fingers were going to find the grooves of what he wanted to see, but he didn’t want to see into the future. He made the effort to keep his mind focused, _here_ and he took to the wall with a thick pencil, etching broad, dark arcs, meticulously shading several places for emphasis. He let his own thoughts take shape in front of him, consciously staving off the milky precognitive fugue.

He sketched for several hours that way, silent, burning off the pent-up fury at Larkin, the world; the commodification of everything that made him special. Sylar finally stopped long enough to rummage through the bag and squirted the paint on the palette and took to the wall. Black and grays were predominant, as were the greens of the nearby garden Peter tended to for a time, before he began leaping every which way through the timelines. He painted around the outline, a smeary memory that Sylar was trying to recreate where a cloudy animosity hung between them. The it wasn’t a coincidence that the roof bore a resemblance of an old sketch Peter had of he and Simone Deveaux on the roof of her father’s building, back when everything had been first set in motion.

The building gave way to the New York skyline and beyond that Sylar mixed the colors on the wall with combination of orange and a darkened red, foreboding except not—because this memory was well before Peter had begun waking up in the middle of the night, sweaty, terrified and and full of vitriol from his precognitive dreams. Sunsets and sunrises always had a calming effect on him and Sylar couldn’t help but admire the natural blending of colors that he almost didn’t hear the hollow _whoosh_ , a faint but reverberating sound, the feeling he got whenever a time traveler was around. He looked over his shoulder at the kitchen and doorway, seeing nothing, but there were footsteps coming from the bedroom. The feet shuffled and then stopped and it must have been Peter looking at the sight of the bookshelf in the new location. Sure enough Peter’s head popped into view a second later.

“Hey,” Peter said. Sylar waved with the tip of the paintbrush.

“Long time no see, Chicken Little,” Sylar said and inhaled deeply, the tantalizing aroma of grease and curry filling his nostrils. He eyed the bag of food in Peter’s hand.

“Someone’s feeling nostalgic,” Peter said, sights set on the half-finished mural. “When is it?” he asked, though clearly distracted.

“January 29th, 2015.” Sylar replied automatically.

Peter’s hand tightened on the bag when he moved forward to look at their outlined forms, sitting side-by-side, shoulders inches apart, indifferent from the scorch marks and dried blood around them. Years before, Sylar had waded back in time with Peter under the conditions that he’d let Peter take point and investigate his lead that would help prevent Pinehearst or Nathan from ascending to power. They would do anything to keep abilities from spilling into the public consciousness.

It became apparent while Peter had learned to avoid stepping on the butterflies, Sylar was all to keen on capturing them, pulling their wings back to examine their pristine, unsullied beauty. It was too tempting to cross his own path without Peter’s knowledge. Where he prevented his younger self from being spied upon in his Brooklyn shop, avoiding the effervescent smiles of well-mannered young women. There was no need to heap broken hearts and betrayals upon himself when he could very well fix it.

There were other instances when Sylar obliquely cautioned his past self against manipulating one Mohinder Suresh but for some reason he never heeded his own warnings.

And afterwords, they’d come back to the present to find it unrecognizable. Sometimes Sylar only screwed with the timeline so he could get a genuine rise out of Peter and make him fight back. Peter had a habit of tunnel-vision and Sylar knew from his own experiences how that kind of thing blinds a man to the point where it was impossible to unlearn. The memory that Sylar had painted was one of those instances. Sylar couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in so much pain when Peter had actually let himself feel something other than self-righteous anger, fists connecting to jaws, bones mending and breaking again. Peter was angry at the world, but when he was angry at Sylar, at least he could do something about it in here and now.

Without warning, Peter broke out of his reverie and pulled Sylar into a hug. Peter was rather lackadaisical about showing affection, now more than ever. It was usually after a bad run into the past that Peter was more inclined to lower his guard which reminded Sylar of the man he knew before. Sylar automatically hugged back, holding him long enough to be polite. He broke free of the hug first and grabbed the bag from Peter’s grasp. “What’s this?” he asked, opening. “Ah, so you were in London,” he said once the scent of greasy fries and curry reached his nose unfiltered.

“Micah, Abby and West are in low spirits these days,” Peter said. “Thought I’d stick around and help them out.”

It sounded right up Peter’s alley. Sylar wasn’t keen on entertaining the twentysomethings Peter had recruited to help stave off the end, and as far as he was concerned, they were all liabilities. Except for Micah. There was something about Sylar that made him inclined to trust those who he’d tried to killed and who tried killing him in turn; it was something he might let a psychologist ponder one day if any lived after the end times.

Sylar ran the tip of his paintbrush along the groove of Peter’s scar and grabbed the bag of food from him.

“And, pray tell, how did boosting the morale of the British contingent go?” Sylar asked, easing into an English accent while he flicked open the container of fries. He perched himself on the edge of the table and began eating the fries by the fistful.

“It could have gone better,” Peter said admitted, flopping into the recliner chair that he turned 180 to face Sylar.

“It can always go better,” Sylar said. He was halfway through his second handful of fries when there was a knock at the door. He canted his head and Peter tried to get up.

“It’s probably Mia,” Sylar said, his mood souring at the thought.

“Let me get it,” Peter said but Sylar pushed him down with an invisble hand. He wiped his fingers on a thigh and stared at him.

“We don’t have to answer.”

“She’s nice,” Peter said through the second knock and for the six thousandth time, Sylar wasn’t going to agree.

“She’s nosy.,” he corrected.

Peter shook his head at Sylar’s unconvinced eyeroll. The fact that she didn’t have an ability, synthetic or natural also made Peter much more likely to trust her. It was easier for Sylar to operate under the conditions that nobody should be trusted, abilities or no. But Peter brought him lunch so he’d humor him.

Syar quietly shifted into his tenant form, losing a few inches of height as his hair shortened to his skull and lightened until it was blonde.

“She has a crush on me,” Peter added, like that was a decent excuse and shifted into his own tenant form. The dead brother of the President couldn’t very well go around showing his scarred, terrorist features. Peter’s face rearranged itself into a fair-skinned facade, eyebrows sagging under the weight of multiple piercings and a head of red hair that he kept pulled back into a lazy ponytail.

Sylar reached the door before the third series of _rap-rap-rap_ and sure enough, Mia Luong, the building super was standing on the other side, her yellow shawl covering her shoulders that stooped in a perpetual ache.

“Hi, Mia,” Sylar said, indulging her in a warm smile. She smiled back and looked from him and tried peering in.

“Michael,” she hemmed, smoothing a hand over the corner of her shawl. “Is Peter here?” Sylar rubbed his eyebrow and leaned against the door, nodding. He opened the door to reveal Peter sitting at the table, poaching his fries. He looked over his shoulder and Peter gave her a wave and when he looked back, of course Mia’s face lit up. Sylar left the door as soon she started the conversation in Mandarin and he gave Peter his best annoyed look as they passed each other.

Sylar prodded at his saffron rice, not imagining the elaborate possibilities of Mia as a plant or opportunistic hen. Peter had a done a thorough job of convincing him she wasn’t since he’d spent an inordinate amount of time finding a viable place in the city for them to conduct their affairs. It just happened to be in one of the dingier parts of the city. Sylar wouldn’t have minded hiding in plain sight, but he understood the risk, even if he didn’t appreciate it. But he often wished that they could agree to set-up shop elsewhere where they wouldn’t be disturbed or discovered. They could easily rig up all the proper necessities in an abandoned warehouse, fix-up an old loft for old time’s sake. But Peter insisted that they live amongst people, to keep them grounded. Sylar had scoffed Peter’s reasoning, though he couldn’t dismiss the earnestness of it.

Peter and Mia’s conversation went on for a few minutes while Sylar ate. Peter had made sure to verify Mia’s residency (or lackthereof for a number of years) and ownership of the building through numerous city records. As much as Sylar hated to admit it, she was just a normal, nosy old woman. Sylar’s ears perked up when Peter joined in with Mia’s laughter.

Plastic fork-midway in his mouth, he felt Mia’s eyes on him and he stopped to survey her inspecting the cluttered mess. Nosy. Their eyes met and Sylar waited.

“How goes your research?”

Sylar stared for a moment, parsing the innocent question. _She’s only being friendly_ echoed somewhere in the back of his mind and he didn’t bothering narrowing his eyes at either one of them.

He was assuming an identity as a graduate student working on his dissertation. It easily explained the odd hours he kept, while Peter had begun passing himself off as a starving artist without a gallery to call his own.

In another tick under the _pros_ column, Peter had pointed out that she read less English than she spoke. The language barrier made her more trustworthy and inclined to trust since Peter was able to step over it from time he spent sequestered elsewhere in the timeline learning the language in the first place.

“It’s coming along,” Sylar said, empty conversation depriving him of food and Peter’s attention. Nonetheless, he gave her a practiced, student-tired smile and finally took a bite from his fork. Mia nodded thoughtfully. She patted Peter’s arm and smiled at him again as she backed out of the apartment. The two of them shifted back to their original forms when Peter closed the door.

Peter returned to take a seat across from Sylar.

“She wants me to take a look at the furnace in the basement,” Peter said and nabbed a fry. Sylar smiled ruefully at the irony of Peter being the maintenance man, the sought-out Mr. Fix-It of the building. “It does feel a little cool in here,” he said off-handedly. Sylar shrugged. If Peter had to bend to the whims of the super to live rent-free, relatively undisturbed, Sylar wasn’t in a position to argue.

“Uh-huh,” Sylar said. “I’m sure her furnace hasn’t been touched in awhile.”

Peter clicked his tongue and raised an eyebrow. “Are we talking her furnace or your’s?”

Sylar smirked and went back to his food. Peter, however, stopped and tapped the table with the knobby fry.

Sylar reached to spill the curry over his rice. “I’ve been thinking that you might not have the right idea about following Nathan to the Montevideo conference only to ‘talk’ to him,” Sylar said.

As expected, Peter let his fork sink into the mess of food he leaned back in the chair, arms folding into himself, a very distinct throwback to his defiant youth. Disengagement before even fully reacting.

“I want to see if another name rings a bell,” Peter said, ignoring the question. Misdirecting the conversation, another convention of Peter Petrelli’s conversational style. “Tracy Strauss.”

Sylar shook his head.

“Tracy Strauss,” Peter said, getting up and walking to the wall to tug off a new article that he didn’t notice since Sylar returned from Pennsylvania. He came back and slid the photo across the table.

“Now that looks like a wedding photo,” Sylar said, harboring his surprise. “With your brother.”

“She was a lobbyist turned First Lady,” Peter said and Sylar looked to him.

“Interesting,” Sylar said. He wiped his hands on the napkin and flicked a finger out at the desk behind Peter and his wireless keyboard floated through the air.

“What did you do?” Sylar asked, typing her name into the search engine. Peter got up and wandered to the computer.

“Kept her from meeting Nathan, naturally. Took her ability. She was quite grateful.”

“Interesting,” Sylar repeated and followed Peter. He slid the keyboard back on the desk and sat down. “I know Nathan wasn’t initially popular with the family values crowd back in the day, but his people had carved the narrative of the well-meaing divorced father of two pretty well. There are whole books about how he represents the new sociological makeup of the American family.”

“She’d greased a lot of wheels for her and my father before. But it hasn’t looked like much has changed without her at his side.

“He had bad influences before her,” Sylar said. He opened the first couple of pages.

“So what is she doing now?” Peter asked, reading the slow crawl of text on the screen.

“Working for Casey Bachmann it seems,” Sylar said.

“Who?” Peter asked, puzzled.

“Casey Bachmann? He wrote a book about how the right was wrong in supporting Nathan’s bid for the presidency. Started the Coalition about four years ago right around the time Pinehearst had started getting in the news.”

“The Coalition?” Peter asked. He grabbed the nearby recliner and pulled it closer, turning it around so it faced the computer and he slumped into it.

Sylar looked at him and shook his head.

“CAPWA,” Sylar said and pulled open the organization’s home page. He was always fascinated by the way Peter was able to stumble blindly between the past and present, hoping to do so much but usually understood so little of the changes he made. “Christians Against People With Abilities. They turned into the Coalition about two years ago when the right-wingers decided that some of their cranky liberal counterparts had enough political clout to help them spread their message. Kind of a bastardized thing to see them come together, actually,” Sylar said.

“What does she do for them?”

“It look like something PR-related. This page has her bio here. She’s looking happier without her ability, don’t you think?”

“This is good, right ….These small changes are a good step,” Peter said, he said and the uncertainty hovered in his voice.

“You don’t even know where your chess pieces can move after you move them,” Sylar said.

Peter got up and Sylar edged out of his way. “This might be different. We’ve seen it before. Smaller changes like this that can ripple,” he said, going to stare at the painting again. “We have to wait and see.”

Sylar didn’t bother to ask Peter what _change_ really meant anymore. Instead he came up behind him and slid his arms low around his waist, nose touching the side of Peter’s head. “Seems like we’re always waiting for something or other,” he said, quiet enough that Peter turned his head at the brush of Sylar’s lips.

Sylar drowsed, face planted at the curve of Peter’s hip, the taste of sweat and Peter still strong on his tongue. Peter twined his fingers in Sylar’s hair and tugged gently until he looked up.

“My leg’s falling asleep,” he said. 

Sylar mouthed a row of dry kisses along Peter’s abdomen and watched the rise and fall of Peter’s chest, eyes roaming the shape and angle of his body. Peter lifted his head and watched him expectantly. The pulse in Sylar’s his ears had lessened significantly, his head clear enough that he could see beyond what Peter was saying. The man could hardly bruise or bleed; Lord knows he’s tried enough over the years to see how far Peter could bend until he broke. Circulation wasn’t the issue. That meant that it was something else. Sylar pressed the side of his face on the hip again, stroking Peter’s leg. It was difficult to relish the moments of peace they had together. He pressed a final kiss to his pelvis, hand tracing the curve of bone and surrounding muscle. 

He far too comfortable to want to move but Sylar rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, eyes closed and allowed himself to feel the coolness of the air and texture of drying sweat, the fading ache in his thighs. He felt Peter’s knuckles at his temple and that’s all it took to pull him back. He craned his neck and Peter sat up, wrists crossing on top of drawn knees.

He knew that fatigue all too well. They’d been playing politics for a long time without suits.

“You think I’m a hamster running in a wheel,” Peter said. Sylar had to close his eyes to steel himself against the bitterness. It was true that Peter didn’t know how to pick up a task that wasn’t Sisyphian in nature and sometimes Sylar thought the task was monumental and exhausting.

“I’ve never said that and don’t pretend I’ve thought it, either” Sylar said, knowing that Peter respected his privacy better than anyone he met. He rolled onto his stomach, propping himself on his elbows and crawled up to the headboard. “We’ve had this discussion before. What you’re doing is… maybe impossible. But I’ve seen and done impossible things. I have no doubt that this is going to all end badly unless someone does something about it.” He propped the pillows behind him and sank, knocking a splayed knee at Peter but got no discernible reaction.

“Every little change I make… it’s adding up,” Peter said like he was trying to convince himself. Sylar rolled onto his side and touched Peter’s thigh.

“But so is every explosion you detonate. You’re on every watch imaginable and I’m pretty sure there are two domestic agencies whose sole purpose is to find us. How President Petrelli’s kept the fact that his brother is classified as a terrorist is an American secret that will go down in history,” Sylar said. 

Peter continued to stare at the rumpled sheets at his feet. Sylar sat up on his elbows and stared at the muscles in Peter’s back.

“Look, you’re the one who convinced me that I couldn’t keep going on the way I was, being loud and proud with a maniacal method to my madness. I don’t like the fact that I can’t be the person who I thought I was meant to be but I’ve gotten over that. I’ve evolved, but I’m not any happier that Pinehearst and your brother have made a mess of things. I want to see them stopped because people don’t deserve what they have. That’s change. It’s… not ideal, but it’s real. After all, I’m still here,” Sylar said and traced Peter’s spine with his index finger. 

The lack of a reaction out of Peter made Sylar exasperated. 

“I don’t think anything worthwhile’s going to come out of Montevideo. Nathan was the instigator of this whole mess but it’s so much larger than him now. Larger than the country. The top-down approach to… stopping the—” even now, after the destruction he’d seen steeped in Peter’s dreams that he couldn’t help but project some nights, Sylar couldn’t actually call it the end of the world. The apocalypse. “What we were doing wasn’t working. That’s why Pinehearst and it’s sister facilities were a second target. So were the committee members. Larkin. Russell. Re-grouping, re-prioritizing. Away from Nathan.” 

Peter rubbed his face and swiped the air in front of him, pulling his hand back, and the dozen of sketchbooks from the bookshelf flew to the floor, landing with harsh clacks. The sketchbooks opened of Peter’s accord and the pages flipped by themselves. 

Peter unfurled his legs and got up. “No matter what I do, what _we_ do, things get worse and we get closer to the day when you and I, Mia and the barista at the cafe won’t be around anymore. It won’t matter if we can’t die, there will be nothing left at all.” He reached for the nearest book. “It’s all the same. And it’s useless.” He paged through the drawings, looking for something an quickly dropped it, bending down to look for another one. Sylar reached for Peter’s pillow, curling into it, watching Peter’s naked display. Peter’s pillow was still damp with sweat and Sylar buried his face and inhaled, clutching the cotton. It was a long moment before he sat up.

“Have you ever stopped to think that you spent too much time in the past and future, trying to fix it from there? Things are happening here, too, you know,” Sylar said. “I don’t like living with this over my head either, but that’s not stopping me from trying to figure out what the hell is going on _now_.” He got off the bed and grabbed one of the sketchbooks at Peter’s feet and sat down on the edge of the bed, turning the pages.

He paused to find a young girl strapped to one of Pinehearst’s medical chairs. He flipped to several others of dilapidated buildings and monuments, swept away by the increasing climate change disasters whose man-made causes were much more evident now, to the exterior of a supermarket building that looked as normal as anything. “There are a few of these and sometimes I look at them and I’m wondering if I’m not looking at at the future, but the present. Our present.” He slid the open book onto Peter’s lap and pointed at the hungry-looking child on the page. 

Sylar placed his hands on his knees and sighed. “I”m not saying that Nathan doesn’t have a role to play. He still has too much power in every sense of the word.”

Peter turned the next several pages.

“But what I’m saying is, if the future really is written in stone, then I think we’re going to need a bigger chisel,” Sylar said. 

Peter continued paging through the sketchbook. “And if you’re wrong?”

“Then you’ll go back and undo it. You can’t help yourself anymore than I can,” Sylar said, flopping backwards. “If all else fails, you are doing me the favor of dropping me off somewhere in my timeline so I can have a bit of fun before hell sets the hand-basket on fire.” 

Peter closed the sketchbook and dropped it on the floor.

Peter grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled on it until Sylar rolled over and Peter wiped himself down.

“But kiling Nathan _doesn’t_ change anything,” Peter said. Sylar remembered. Because Peter had recounted every one of Nathan’s grisly deaths that he witnessed over the years. 

“Not killing him hasn’t change anything,” Sylar said and Peter’s gaze lowered. “It’s time to get more imaginative.”

Sylar rolled onto his side, watching Peter leave the bed and disappear into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Sylar shoved the mess out of the way and curled back the pillow, falling asleep to the sound of the running water and the image of Peter angrily trying to wash himself clean.

 

***

 

June was winter in Uruguay. It was also the place where the first round of multilateral talks Nathan was spearheading to develop closer ties in the scientific communities around the world was occurring. There was no better time to pay the President a visit.

Sylar sat on the edge of the bathtub and inhaled the soft, cloying scent of the mango soap, waiting patiently for his cue. He’d been deprived of making a good entrance for so long that Peter was allowing him a moment’s indulgence. He glanced at his watch and after a few minutes of picking at the dry soap, he felt Nathan’s approach long before the sound of the door opening and the beginning of the brotherly exchange reached his ears. 

Sylar lingered near the open bathroom door and leaned against the frame, crossing his arms, eyes drifting from Nathan’s defensive posture at the sight of his brother lounging on his bed, to the book in Peter’s lap. Sylar cleared his throat and Nathan looked his way with glare that was a sight for sore eyes. Sylar grinned. 

“Swanky place you have here,” Sylar said and tossed the bar of soap at Nathan. Nathan caught it and threw it right back at him. His TK easily kept it at bay. He sauntered around the levitating bar. 

“ _This_ is the company you’re keeping these days? Come on, Peter,” Nathan said. 

“Careful of what you say,” Sylar said. He smirked and grabbed the soap and waved it in front of Nathan’s face. It appeared that even without the glare of the TV lights and make-up artists, Nathan had crawled beyond middle-age fairly well. Maybe too well. 

“Company,” Peter laughed. “The Company. Pinehearst. Vue International. That’s the company _you’ve_ been keeping. Scientists, thieves and murderers. Looking out for only your well-being and your agenda. You have a blank check and all the political capital in the world to do whatever the hell you want, regardless of the danger.” 

Peter closed his copy of _The Petrelli Dynasty_ and sat up, dropping the book on the bed. “Don’t bother thinking loudly for help. They’re not going to be able to hear you,” he said.

Peter got up from the bed and began to circle Nathan. Sylar discarded the soap on the duvet and grabbed the book, flipping it over to look at the front and back covers. 

“What a flattering photo, Mr. President,” he said, giving him another once over before he wandered to the armchair. He sat down with a blase veneer but kept an ear elsewhere, listening for potential trouble. He flipped through several pages of the book and noticed that Peter had taken to underlining and writing notes in the margin—some of which were hilarious—but he wouldn’t be able to focus on now because he had a front row seat to the Petrelli family feud redux. 

“You can’t keep doing this, acting out like a little kid because things don’t go your way,” Nathan said. 

“It’s always going to be the same,” Peter said with enough disappointment that Sylar looked at him, wondering if he was going to deviate from the plan. Not that he wouldn’t mind watching Peter take Nathan go down for good, but that wasn’t what Peter had suggested. 

Sylar laid his thumb on the corner of the book, marking his place went back to examining Nathan’s body language, how loose and unafraid he was. After all these years, after everything Peter’s done, it was still like he never thought his little brother would hurt him. 

“Nothing I say will make you see that signs,” Peter said, causing Nathan to laugh. 

“The end of the world. You really don’t think I haven’t talked to the precogs? That I don’t see reports and analyses of what they’re seeing? It’s kind of a strategic thing in my line of work, to know anticipate what could or might happen and prepare accordingly.”

“And still you’re doing nothing to stop humanity from destroying itself,” Peter said. 

“Are you serious?” Nathan said. “This Global Science Initiative is going to change the way we exchange information, foster a unity that transcends national lines and together develop scientific fields that have gone neglected for far too long because of petty politics.”

Sylar sat up and tossed the book aside. Ego, thy name is Nathan Petrelli, complete with well-rehersed talking points.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your constituents,” Peter snapped.

“Damn it, Peter,” Nathan said. “When I first took office, I proposed bold, sweeping mandates about pushing the scientific envelope. The public, my staff, almost everybody thought I was crazy and that it would never amount to anything. But I knew that it was our time to lead the way in the name of discovery and innovation again. People are healthier, happier. The only problem we have is _you_ , threatening our security. And despite _that_ , even foreign students are flocking back to the country for the first time in decades — and they’re staying — helping us become a better, stronger nation precisely because we’re ready to take these steps. We’re ready to learn more about ourselves.”

Sylar folded his arms, still puzzled by what was bothering him. It could be possible that he was surprised Nathan wasn’t angrier or more retaliatory.

“You don’t understand what the costs are, where this road is leading,” Peter said, unable to even gesture through his building anger. “Scientific advancement is a great thing, Nathan, and I support that, but do you _really_ think people are going to be happy with only being able to fly or see better? Run faster? When there’s unlimited possibilities of messing with our genetic code? No, they’re going to want to have more power and they’re going to get it. The military formulas _will get leaked_ and then all of your allies in the ‘Global Science Initiative’ are going to produce their own versions, patent it, and give it to their own militaries and citizens. You won’t be able to stop them.”

Nathan’s eyes barely flicked in Sylar’s direction before he turned his back to Sylar so that he was facing Peter, out of his line of sight. Sylar sat up, not liking that at all. Nathan reached out to touch Peter on the shoulder and Peter’s face slackened, searching his brother’s face but Sylar was relieved when Peter’s jaw tightened and he shrugged the hand off. Peter grabbed Nathan by the wrist and neck, twisted his arm behind his back and kneed him to the floor in a sweeping motion. Sylar chuckled.

“Kennedy might have put a man on the moon but we might have to relocate there because of you,” Sylar said airily. “Actually, how much money is going to NASA these days?” Nathan’s face was pressed to the floor, in no position to reply. Sylar was going to shrug it off but instead then he let himself down on one knee and bent to look Nathan in the eye while Peter sat with his weight braced on his brother.

“At least tell me this: do you have a Special Pinehearst Blend bonded to your genetic code?” Sylar looked to Peter, wondering if he had noticed the same, _off_ sensation about Nathan. Peter lowered his eyes and nodded in confirmation, staring at the back of his brother’s head as if was looking the answer in the face. 

Nathan didn’t dignify him with a response and Sylar smiled. “Well, that sounds like a yes to me,” Sylar said and got up.

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Peter said, tightening his grip on the back of Nathan’s head. Nathan’s eyelid drooped and his face slackened as Peter flooded him with years worth of memories, visions of the future so that he could see and experience it for himself. Peter gasped and withdrew his hand, distracted. 

“There’s going to be a woman coming. Leticia Alvarez. It seems my brother’s anticipated that we might corner him one day. Can you make sure we don’t get interrupted?” 

Sylar nodded. “Let me know if you figure out what else he can do, other than fly,” Sylar siad. When he tried closing the door behind him, he found a bit of invisible resistance. Sylar opened it again and peered in.

“Don’t burn the place down,” Peter said. 

“Like I’m going to let you have all the fun,” Sylar said and waved him off, though he knew how much Peter wanted Nathan and his Secret Service to get out alive. He walked through the empty hallways that they’d cleared earlier, leaving half-dozen agents in slumped in the laundry room. 

Sylar glanced around the spacious villa, wicker chairs and mauve-colored sofa in the living room. He checked the front and kitchen patio entrances, circling to the study, through the bathroom and back again, feeling the nagging itch in the back of his mind. He stilled near the window that faced the ocean, brochure-perfect and serene with the sunlight dancing on the waves. He closed his eyes and felt the hollow whoosh followed by a metallic tickle at his temple. He dropped to his knees but not fast enough to miss the searing pain, the scent of burned hair in his nose. Blood poured from his ear and mouth and he sank to his face, his sight gone and body shutting down. As soon as his cheek met the tile warmed by his blood, the blurriness in his vision began to fade. Sylar rolled onto his hands and knees, hearing a faint snicker in only one ear as the skin of his other was stitching itself together, his body still repairing the eardrum and canal and cartilage curling back into place. He palmed the side of his head and used his other arm to lash out, extending a telekinetic bond like a whip and he heard the predictable thud and and the clatter of the gun falling. The weapon materialized the moment it left her hand and he heaved it across the room. 

Leticia snickered.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Sylar said and felt like his stomach was dropping out when he was heaved backwards through the window. He landed the patio, glass fragments scratching his face and neck. Sylar clenched his jaw and whirled to his feet, heaving the potted plants blindly in her direction with no success. 

He stalked through the broken window.

Sylar eyed the wicker chairs, tantalizing starters for a fire. He warmed his palms in consideration while letting his eyes roam the empty room, trying to figure out what exactly felt sloppy about the woman’s movements that he couldn’t see but could feel. It wasn’t physical proximity was more like she had pushed him with telekinesis of her own. Or she could have been a mimic, in which case Sylar closed his fist.

He kept his taunts to himself, searching the room again because she wasn’t a shimmer but he knew she was close. Sylar began knocking the art off the walls and flung several broken pieces of glass in the air, not because he though he could blindly hit her, but to give him space to breathe, to feel, to pick apart the details he couldn’t quite see.

Sylar reached out with his telekinesis, a thin webbing, trying to find a bit of resistance. And yes — _there_ she was — felt the outline of her shoulders an arm but she delivered an invisible blow to his stomach. Hunched forward, Sylar gestured, tightening a hold on her, adrenaline rushing through him by the fact that he looked like he was holding thin air but he had her in his grip. He squeezed his palm shut like a vice but stopped the pressure altogether. Instead foisted enough pressure on her spine that her blood curdling yelp surprised Sylar. She materialized on the other side of the couch and fell to the floor, body useless beneath her.

He approached, frown pulling at his lips and crouched beside her, looking her in the eye. Invisibility. Telekinesis. There was a possibility that there was more, that she was holding back. It annoyed him that there was something he couldn’t quite pin down. Normally the thought the power of mimicry would make him salivate, but when he looked down at her, he felt nauseous.

He brushed the dark hair from her face, thumbing one of the age lines in her forehead.

“I like my power _au natural_ ,” Sylar said quietly and his index finger down her cheek. The terror in her eyes was enchanting, even moreso once his hand curled around her throat.

The sound of footsteps made him hesitate.

“Sylar.” 

He closed his eyes for a moment, Peter’s presence dampening his concentration.

“We need to go,” Peter said and the marked insistence pushed Sylar’s sense of urgency forward. He squeezed her throat and made to snap her neck but Peter wrenched him backwards by the elbow and the villa disappeared around them. 

Once they were back in the apartment, Peter let go of him immediately, stormed into the living room and began tearing down whatever photos and articles were dangling from the timelines. He proceeded to pull the yarn from the wall and kick the stacks of paper across the floor. 

Sylar took a step back to gauge Peter’s outburst and went into the kitchen, moistening a washcloth as Peter peeled items from the far edge of the wall, crumpling each piece before it fell to the floor. Sylar wiped the dried blood from cheeks and mouth tried to scrub the crusty remnants around his ear. His hair was a complete mess and he’d need to shower before he would be able to get the blood and potted soil out. Sylar managed to keep his distance while Peter removed and balled up every print-out and newspaper from the wall except the obituaries. The wall’s nakedness was more disconcerting than Sylar thought it’d be.

He moistened a second washcloth and waited while Peter took off his jacket before handing it to him. Peter dabbed at the dried blood from where his lip had split and healed and then scrubbed his face thoroughly. He sank on the couch.

“You can either talk about what happened after I left or we can go and blow off some steam,” Sylar said, sitting down beside him, leaving the ambiguity to Peter’s imagination. 

Peter let the washcloth drop with a wet thud and he leaned back on the couch, staring at the list of the dead. 

“There’s nothing to talk about. I gave him the dreams, the memories. Showed him what he was leading the world to. He still didn’t care.” Peter shrugged. “Or maybe he did but not enough to do anything about it.” 

Sylar let his head fall back on the couch and he stared at the ceiling. “There was no guarantee that you were going to get through that thick skull,” Sylar said. “Some people never change.”

“At least I tried,” Peter said. 

They sat in prolonged silence, staring at the near-empty wall, the destroyed living room. There wasn’t much Sylar could do to alleviate the despair that was enveloping Peter. Not now, at least. The pain and frustration was too fresh, too close to his heart. Sylar patted him on the knee and got up, reaching for the scattered papers on the floor and Peter soon joined him in cleaning up the mess. 

 

***

 

Sylar lounged with the keyboard on his lap, feet propped up on the corner of the desk, keeping an eye on Nathan’s latest State of the Union address as he toggled through several windows.

“I don’t know why you bother to watch that anymore,” Peter said from the kitchen where he was unpacking a bag of groceries. 

Sylar glanced at Peter, catching his eye. “I’m watching because I don’t think that’s your brother,” he said. 

“What, you think that’s shifter?” Peter asked, depositing the milk on the refrigerator door and continued to unpack the remaining bags.

“A decent one,” Sylar admitted. He tongued the inside of his cheek and sat up, muting the video. He watched Peter. “How come you don’t sound interested? Or surprised?” 

Peter shrugged. “Because I don’t care. I’ve been done with him for awhile.” 

Sylar found that hard to believe because knew that Peter was as resigned as ever. He might have cleared away every visible remnant of his work, the timelines, his sketchbooks and paintings, but his concern for the well-being of everyone wasn’t something Peter could let go of. And Nathan was a part of that as much as anyone, even if it had been six months since their last encounter. 

“If that’s a shifter, then where’s the real Nathan and why is someone else wearing his face?” 

“Do I detect a hint of jealousy?” Peter asked and Sylar snorted. Nathan would be the last person he’d want to impersonate these days. Too much spotlight, too much responsibility and political power was never something Sylar wanted. “Maybe he died and that’s his replacement.”

Peter went to the pantry and Sylar looked back to the screen. 

“Did he?” Sylar asked. “You’d care if he was dead,” Sylar said. Peter shook his head. 

“Don’t be so sure,” Peter said.

Sylar spent the next few minutes searching for earlier footage of Nathan while listening to the shapeshifter roll out the year’s economic agenda. “I’m pretty sure he dropped out of sight a few weeks after Montevideo,” Sylar said, idly trying to draw conclusions. “Did you kill him?”

“No,” Peter said, but the syllable was too light, the answer came too quick. It piqued his curiosity. Sylar got up from the computer and the applause droned on, and headed into the kitchen area to linger near the refrigerator. 

“Take his memories?” he asked, absently pushing the magnets around beneath his palm by touch rather than invisible force. 

“No, I didn’t take his memories,” Peter said, a the hint of annoyance to his voice. He turned around and leaned against the counter.

“So he walked out of there alive and well with all your dreams of the apocalypse rattling around in his head,” Sylar said. 

“Yes, I gave him the future but that didn’t change his mind. I told you that,” Peter said, but it was what he _wasn’t_ telling him that was the problem. Peter abruptly frowned as Nathan’s voice crested in another around of applause from the computer and Sylar plucked several of the magnets from the refrigerator door and passed them from his right hand to his left and back again. It was a habit he’d developed over the years, where he made sure to keep his hands occupied while talking when he’d otherwise rather use other methods of persuasion to get to the heart of a matter. 

“What’s the missing piece?” Sylar asked and tossed the oblong magnet at Peter.

“The missing piece?” Peter laughed and caught it easily, but a frown was tugging at his lips. “Showing him— _giving_ him the future didn’t work,” he said, tossing the magnet back at him and Sylar cycled it back into the rotation between his palms. “At first I thought I killed him, but no. He woke up, skipped the second lecture and tried to kill me,” he said. 

“I’m not surprised,” Sylar said.

“He’s my brother. I love him and I couldn’t kill him.” Peter shrugged. That refrain was all too familiar. “But I did the next best thing,” he said with a nonchalance that Sylar wasn’t expecting. Peter folded his ams and Sylar put the magnets back on the door.

“Don’t be surprised, but I got the idea from Parkman’s vendetta against you,” Peter said.

“Aha! You _did_ scramble his egg,” he said and Peter’s tired look muted Sylar’s enthusiasm.

“I scrambled enough to keep him from being a danger to the world,” Peter said and Sylar could only begin to guess the extent of the job.    
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sylar asked.

Peter avoided his eyes. Of course it would be a burden that Peter kept to himself so he could bathe in the pool of guilt. But they could have been using this to their advantage, been planning for months had he known. 

“Do you know where he is?” Sylar asked. 

Peter shook his head. “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Sylar laughed and reached for his arm. “This could create some good controversy.” 

Peter scoffed. “Of course it would. The President that’s not really the President. In an election year no less.” There had to be a certain reluctance on Peter’s part to ruining his brother’s public name if he’d kept this from him for so long, but Sylar didn’t care to dwell.

“No, think about it the potential,” Sylar said and wandered back to the computer, motioning at the screen. “The President, _the real one_ who happens to have an ability—both natural and synthetic—losing control of his mind, of his memories. He’s been the biggest advocate of abilities and the science behind it. What if the same thing happened to a few other high-profiled individuals: politicians, lawyers and mothers, insurance agents and cashiers. Someone who knows someone who has a power and lost their mind. People would think twice about going to the clinics and getting a booster ability anymore. Especially if they can’t predict who might have a reaction.”

“That… would create a mass hysteria,” Peter said.

“Or become a stop-gap measure,” Sylar said. Peter frowned and Sylar leaned back in his chair. “It wouldn’t get rid of people’s abilities but maybe the paranoia would create enough of a backlash. Maybe they’d use some of Mohinder’s failed research as a springboard. Get people back to normal,” Sylar said.

“You’re suggesting I turn innocent people crazy,” Peter said.

Sylar sank down in the chair and tried his best to look offended. Without looking he pointed at the wall where Peter still kept the obituaries. Peter’s prolonged silence made him more anxious more than it should have. Sylar turned the video off and watched Peter pull the kitchen chair to the desk. 

“Not a lot of people, only enough to bring attention to this,” Sylar said. Peter sat, remaining silent and Sylar clicked through the videos that he could quickly find from the last six months.

“We’ll need to have documentation and evidence that Pineheart’s formula was harming people,” Peter said. “And we’ll have to find Nathan.” 

“We can fake the documentation and make enough evidence. All we need to do is plant the seed, get it into people’s minds. The rest’ll happen by itself.” Sylar was all too familiar on how to wield the power of fear to the best of his abilities. 

Sylar dragged another window forward and played some news footage of CAPWA’s spring protests from Chicago and DC. “I think the former First Lady might be in a position to help us get the word out.”

“Ripples,” Peter said quietly.

“Small changes might help make the big difference after all,” Sylar said and closed the browser.

“I don’t have a clue where Nathan might be.”

Sylar shut down the machine and slid his keyboard back in the tray. “Don’t worry about that. We can find him later. I know exactly where we can start,” he said and reached for Peter’s elbow.

 

***

The study was dim except for the desk lamp angled at Larkin’s workspace, illuminating fists clenched fists over a cherry wood polish. Sylar sat across from Larkin and reclined in his seat, drinking in the sight of Peter subduing the thrashing man. Larkin had lost control of most of his vocal chords, so his pleas were limited to the frothy murmurs and pleading stare that went unanswered as Peter splayed his hand across the man’s head. Peter grabbed Larkin’s flailing arm and pinned it to the armrest and his eyes fluttered shut, concentrating on the task at hand. Sylar shifted in his seat, anticipation getting the better of him. Peter was good at this, very good, and the despite the dubious morality involved, it felt _right_ , normal, working together with their ideas and course of action. Larkin jerked forward into Peter’s touch, almost sliding out of the chair and Peter caught him and put him back like a rag-doll. An arm went swinging and sent the lamp flying from the desk and landed, neck angled upward and flooded the ceiling with a hazy light, silhouetting both Larkin and Peter’s forms. 

Peter’s lips pursed in concentration and turned Larkin in swivel chair, bracing him against the desk to keep him still. It wasn’t until Peter opened his eyes, staring right at Sylar, the determination shifting into a vague sense of horror that Sylar straightened in his chair, following Peter’s gaze to see the petrified wife—Diana—standing at the doorway while the daughter—Lindsey—ran towards her father.

He raised his arm, carefully pushing them backwards, applying enough pressure to jaws and lips to silence them. Their eyes widened as their arms and legs stiffened. Sylar shut the study’s doors behind him and inched the two of them through the hall and set down on the couch. Sylar stepped forward and when he looked down, the blinds of the window cast vertical shadows across his body, making him look more terrifying than he felt. His eyes roamed the bit of sidewalk he could see through the slits, at the the streetlights and neighbors’ houses, and everything else to avoid looking into the eyes of a prepubescent girl crying in the dark with her mother. Neither of them even had any abilities.

Scarcely a moment later the doors to the study opened and Peter came into the living room and Sylar was all to keen to change guard and hang back. He loosened the muscles in their faces so they could sob properly, have their peace before they’d forget. It’s what Peter didn’t have to ask him to do. 

Peter pushed the coffee table out so that he could kneel in front of them.

“Peter?! What are you doing here? What did you do to Mace!” she sobbed, high-pitched in fear, a sound that was normally music to Sylar’s ears but made him cringe inside as much as Peter. 

“What I had to,” he said with such overwhelming sadness that Sylar was grateful for the cover the dark living room gave him. 

“Please, leave us alone,” Diana whispered. She was struggling against the telekinesis so much that she was going to end up with several pulled muscles, trying to turn and see her daughter. Peter reached out and placed his hand on her forehead and Sylar lingered out of Peter’s eyeline, releasing a little of the pressure on the woman’s lower arm. Her fingers quickly locked with her Lindsey’s while Peter pushed the memories of the last several minutes from her mind. Lindsey’s heaving sobs became louder the moment her mother stopped calling her name.

Peter eased Diana’s unconscious body down on the couch and Lindsey continued to shake with full-body sobs that it finally clicked in Sylar’s mind. Peter did the mother a favor by wiping her memory first so she wouldn’t have to suffer and see her child’s mind violated, even if she wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Peter’s shoulders tightened and wiped some of the tears from her cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” Peter said and placed his hand over her forehead and eyes, unable watch her face as he pulled the memories from her. 

Peter scooped her limp body into his arms and stood, wordlessly heading towards the stairs. Sylar watched, puzzled, and pulled Diana’s body into his arms. He carried her up the stairs, the guilt increasing with each step and hesitated at the foot of the bed, looking at the matching nightstands, trying to discern which side she slept on. There was a copy of _The New Yorker_ on on the left while a copy of _The Transformation of the Rust Belt_ sat bookmarked on the other next an empty glass of water. Sylar frowned and just laid her down somewhere in the middle, laying her head gently on the pillow. When he strode through hallway, the family photos stared accusingly at him as he passed happily framed memories of Diana and Mace at a bowling alley, the Larkin wedding, birthday parties and what Sylar assumed to be a family reunion with several generations in attendance. He pointedly looked away and continued walking until he reached Lindsey’s door and peered inside.

Peter stood at the foot of her bed, watching her sleep. Sylar had to will his feet forward to enter the room but he stayed out of Peter’s sight and remained unobtrusive. It was several excruciating minutes of listening to Lindsey’s breathing before Peter spoke up.

“They came back early from the movie because she got sick. Too much butter on the popcorn,” Peter said, like he was the one who was sick.

Peter reached out and grabbed Sylar by the wrist. They re-appeared on the rooftop of their building, ankle deep in fresh snow. Peter stepped away, walking towards the edge and peering over.

“I made her forget that she threw up.”

Sylar made his own pair of tracks and leaned against the edge beside Peter and tilted his head, listening to distant wail of sirens careening towards danger. Sylar looked back to him once he realized that Peter was going to stay trapped inside his own head if Sylar didn’t help him out. 

“We can stop if you want,” Sylar said. “We can go back, undo the damage, pretend it never happened and think of something else.” He wasn’t one for feeling the pain of collateral damage, being around Peter tended to expand his range of emotions further than he thought possible. 

Peter’s sad chuckle stung Sylar’s ears more than the January air.

“No. We have to follow this through. Finish what I started.” He balled up a fistful of snow and then heaved it through the sky.

Sylar nodded and took a step back as Peter made a second ball and threw it into the air. Sylar took a moment to dusted the ledge off and watched the powdery snow tumble to the street. Behind him Peter’s footsteps receded and Sylar pivoted towards his strides long as he caught up with Peter grabbed him by the elbow. He pulled him into a hug and Peter stiffened in surprise. It wasn’t out of remorse that he clutched Peter, nestling his face in the crook of Peter’s neck. It was a sign of sympathy and support, that he was aware of how the enormous pressure was on Peter’s shoulders. Peter’s posture loosened and hugged him in return and ran his hand down Sylar’s back.

“Time to make the world crazier than it already is,” Peter murmured and Sylar began to peel away but pulled him back into the embrace, arms sliding around his waist and teleported them back to the apartment.


End file.
